The Ganitasarakaumudi was composed in the early fourteenth century at Delhi by the Jain polymath Thakkura Pheru who held a high position at the treasury of Als’ al- Din Khalji, and contributed to the popularization of science by producing six treatises in Apabharamsa verse on diverse scientific subjects.
The Ganitasarakaumudi extends the range of mathematics far beyond the traditional framework. The first three chapters are structured like the earlier mathematical texts in Sanskrit and treat traditional topics like fundamental operations, fractions, series, proportion, plane and solid geometry and so on. The remaining two chapters contain supplementary material derived from diverse areas of contemporary life where numbers play a role such as mathematical riddles, conversion of dates from Vikrama era. To Hijri era, magic squres and, most remarkable, average yield per bigha of several kinds of grains and pulses topics that were not touched upon in any mathematical text before.
The present volumes offers, besides an introduction, a critically emended text, an English translation and a detailed mathematical commentary where efforts were made to interpret Pheru’s formulas and algorithms in modern notation. There are several appendices, including a comprehensive glossary-index.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michio Yano
Michio Yano, Professor and Dean of the faculty of Cultural Studies at the Kyoto Sangyo University and the chief editor of SCIAMVS, published several studies on Indology and History of science, including Japanese translation of Aryabhata’s Aryabhatiya, Varahamihira’s Brhatsahita and the Carakasamhita ( Sutrasthana).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma
Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma, formerly Professor of Sanskrit at Aligarh Muslim University, wrote extensively on history of science in India. Born in Andhra Pradesh in 1937, he studied Sanskrit at Santiniketan and Indology in Germany, where he earned his Ph.D. from Philipps Universitat, Marburg, for his thesis on a tenth century Sanskrit astronomical text. He has been a fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service at the universities of Marburg and Frankfurt; visiting associate professor at Brown University, Providence; visiting professor at the Universite de Paris III and at Kyoto University. For over a decade he has been surveying Indian astronomical and time-measuring instruments presented in India and abroad. He visited more than seventy-five museums and private collections in India, Belgium Germany. France, the Netherlands, UK and USA and identified some 400 Indian instruments. A descriptive catalogue of these instruments is in preparation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Takanori Kusuba
Takanori Kusuba, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Osaka University of Economics, published, Jointly with Professor David, Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit: Al-Birjandi on Tadhkira II, Chapter 11 and its Sanskrit Translation. Currently he is preparing a critical edition and translation of Narayana Pandita’s Ganitakaumudi.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Takao Hayashi
Takao Hayashi, Professor of History of Science at Doshisha University, Kyoto, wrote extensively on the history of Indian mathematics and translated Bhaskara;s Livavati into Japanese. He was awarded the Salomom Reinach Foundation Prize by the Institute de France, Paris, in 2001 for The Bakhshali Manuscript: An Ancient Mathematical Treatise.
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